More False Optimism on Iraq

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More False Optimism on Iraq
By Steve Chapman

Gen. David Petraeus says the Iraq war is going well, and I believe him. I believe him the way I believe the coach of a perennial football doormat who, every August, assures fans he expects a winning season. Coaches don't get paid to admit they're bound to lose, and generals who are tasked with military missions don't get paid to announce that they can't get the job done.

Petraeus is, by all accounts, an experienced, capable and intelligent commander. So when he says that "the security situation in Iraq is improving," the natural impulse is to trust his battle-seasoned judgment. The Bush administration encourages this notion by suggesting that the opinions of military commanders are the only sound guide to policy.

But if high-ranking military officers are a good barometer of the future, I have a question: Where are the generals who told Americans when things were about to get worse in Iraq, as they have over and over? Which of them warned that insurgent attacks would steadily proliferate in 2005, after elections that were supposed to quell violence? What guy with stars on his shoulders forecast that Iraqi civilian deaths would double over the course of 2006?

Who told us that last year's military strategy of "clear and hold" would fail -- as even the administration admitted afterward that it had? Who predicted that the average number of Americans killed each month this year would be 34 percent higher than last year?

Not the top brass, which has consistently taken an optimistic public stance since the beginning. In November 2003, Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, said achieving victory would require hard work but said "it will be done." In November 2004, Marine Lt. Gen. John Sattler said we had "broken the back of the insurgency." In March 2006, Abizaid assured us, "We are winning." Three years ago, Petraeus himself said that "18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress."

Despite all these cheery soundings, things didn't improve. That's why this year, the administration was forced to increase our troop strength in Iraq by nearly 25 percent in a desperate attempt to reverse the debacle. If the generals had been right about trends in the past, the surge would not have been needed.

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http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/more_false_optimism_on_iraq.html